Johnny's Mom
by Eve Davidson
Summary: Johnny's mother deals with the situation. Her POV.
1. Default Chapter

I guzzled some aspirins with my coffee and held my head, swore to give up drinking again, thought of making myself a nice Bloody Mary or screwdriver just to take the edge off. Then I shook my head. I'd sworn off the stuff.

My husband was asleep on the couch, but passed out was a bit more accurate. He reeked of alcohol. He drank so much it came out of his pores.

Johnny wasn't around but that wasn't unusual. It was the weekend so he was probably up at his friends' house, the kids who lived up the street.

When I was sober, with the awful pulsing pounding beat of a hangover, I felt primarily three things about my son. Guilt, and love, and a thankfulness that he wasn't a no count hoodlum. God knows he hung around with them, those kids always stealing, jumping people, boosting cars, getting thrown in jail. But Johnny wasn't like that somehow.

There were other times, after a couple of shots of whatever whiskey was handy, that I felt different things. That I couldn't help but blame him for making me marry his father, that goddamn bum. And Johnny was just so needy, always underfoot, I never had any space.

There was a tentative knock on the door.

"Cindy?" My neighbor Alice. Her voice was cautious. She was aware, as the neighborhood was aware, that there was usually fighting at my house. Knock down drag out fights, and Johnny would slink out, or just not come home at all. But in the morning things were usually calm.

"Yeah?"

"Have you seen the paper?" She held the paper under her arm and looked through the mesh of the screen.

I passed my husband in the living room, careful not to wake him. Stepped outside and slipped a cigarette from my pocket, handed it to Alice, then lit one for myself. We stood shivering on the stoop, both of us hugging ourselves in the cold morning air.

Alice cleared her throat, looked around nervously.

"Um, you haven't seen it?" she said. I puffed on my cigarette, considered going in for a jacket but didn't want to risk waking the monster.

"No, why?" We didn't get the paper delivered anymore, one too many times we stiffed the paperboy.

"It's, uh, it's Johnny,"

I felt for a minute nothing. I saw the deep concern in Alice's eyes and it isn't like I expected Johnny to be in the paper for anything good, like those rich south side kids. Because, as they said, I knew the score. My son may not have been a no count hoodlum but he sure as shit hung around with them. And if he got in the paper it wouldn't be for no merit badge.

"What did he do?"

"He killed someone,"

The information wouldn't quite register, like she had spoken suddenly in Parisian French, or Japanese, or Greek.

"What?"

"He killed someone," Said so softly but it rang loud and clear that time. He killed someone? My son, who wouldn't fight back no matter how hard his father hit him, who had never hurt anyone…that boy who was so quiet, so calm…had killed someone?

"He what? Who? Who did he kill?"

"A kid. A teenager. A rich one,"

Oh Mary Jesus and Joseph. He was fucked now.


	2. chapter 2

I went back inside, looked at my sleeping husband. How could I tell him? Shook my head, poured another cup of coffee.

Alice had given me the paper and I read it, feeling detached, feeling the numb species of "this isn't happening" that had really defined my adult life. It's what I thought at 16 when I discovered I was pregnant, when I was kicked out of my house and married Stan, I was numb and thinking "this isn't happening."

So I read, kind of skimmed it as terror seeped in, "Johnny Cade…Ponyboy Curtis…fountain covered in blood…Bob Sheldon found dead…fugitives…authorities looking for fugitives…" Oh shit.

It was those friends of his, those hoodlums, dime store hoods he insisted on hanging around with. They put him up to it, made him do it, he wasn't like that. Not my son.

Stan groaned, rolled over. He was waking up. I debated telling him about Johnny. 'Honey, your son murdered someone early this morning. Want some coffee?' I stifled a hysterical laugh and thought of my half pint of vodka hidden in the hall closet behind the towels. Beautiful clear liquid shimmering behind the label.

He stood up, stumbled into the kitchen, eyes half closed. And all at once I was so mad at him, always beating up on Johnny, no wonder he hardly stayed here, no wonder. Then that anger shifted to Johnny, 'what in the hell was he thinking of?' He couldn't keep out of trouble for one damn day. And then it was anger at myself, for sticking with this sinking ship of a marriage, for subjecting Johnny to this kind of life because I was too damn chicken to leave it.

I sighed, so deep, sorrowful. Leaned on the kitchen counter and lit a cigarette. Stan rolled his eyes toward my cigarette and I pointed at the pack on the table. He took one out and lit it. The kitchen filled with smoke.

Then a knock at the door. Stan looked up sharply but made no movement toward answering it. So I did.

"Ma'am?" It was a neatly dressed kid, probably in his early twenties. I stared at him.

"Are you Mrs. Cade?" He had on a blazer and carried a notebook. Delicately he plucked a pen from his pocket.

I nodded and watched him write in his notebook.

"Cindy!" Stan growled my name. I held up one finger to the young man and turned to my husband.

"Who the hell is at the door?"

Before I could answer Stan came to the door, glared at the kid.

"What do you want?"

"Mr. Cade?" I thought the reporter, if that's what he was, was putting up a brave front. With me it had been real, his security, his sense of entitlement to ask whatever questions he planned on asking. But Stan had him shook.

"Look, if you're selling something we don't want it!"

"No, sir, I'm a reporter and wanted to talk to you about your son, Johnny Ca…"

"What about Johnny?" Stan was so angry, so quick to cut people off. Maybe that was why Johnny hardly spoke.

I saw the reporter's eyes shift to the side. Perhaps he didn't want to be the one to break the news. I smirked. These over eager media hounds. Let him be the one to tell. He'd get what he deserved.

He seemed to gather himself, to square his mental shoulders, clear his throat.

"Last night your son and another boy killed someone, but by all accounts it was your son, your son who…"

Stan's anger was turning to a dreadful confusion.


	3. Chapter 3

The reporter kid told us what he knew of the situation and that it seemed, at this point, that Johnny was to blame. Stan told him in no uncertain terms that we would not talk to him, without asking me. I didn't want to talk to no reporter either but Stan was so arrogant that he wouldn't even ask me. But I suppose you get what you settle for.

Back in the house, Stan groping for his morning beer, just a little something to get all the flies going in the right direction. I couldn't believe Johnny would do such a thing. I just wouldn't believe it. If we'd had a phone I suppose it would have begun to ring off the hook, as it was reporters came with their little notebooks and pens tucked away in bags or pockets, snooping about, trying to ask questions. I could see Stan's temper rising as the day wore on and my nerves were absolutely fried. I thought about my bottle of vodka more than once that long afternoon.

I knew Johnny'd gone missing, ran away with that Curtis kid from down the street, police seemed to think they'd headed for Texas. Guilt settled on me in layers, and everyone was to blame. Johnny was to blame for hanging around with those no good friends of his, those nothing but trouble friends. Stan was to blame for beating Johnny and making him leave all the time, making him sleep outside or at friends' houses, making him stay away because anywhere was better than here. And the one with the most blame to take was me, as the afternoon became that impossible hazy gold and all my wrong steps were suddenly clear to me. I should never have stayed in a marriage like this, a marriage of fear and violence and anger and, and all those things. I should never have stayed with a man I found repulsive, who I felt this hatred like a thick smog, it was all around and I breathed it in. How much better might things have been if I'd done it all differently? There was no way to know now.

"That kid, damn it, when I get my hands on him…" Stan said, his speech heavily slurred, his eyes that heavy lidded way they get when he's drunk. And then this anger like some beastly animal just rose up in me, I hated him so much.

"You're not going to get your hands on him," I said, and it was already night, the orange glow of the streetlights tainting everything that sickly orange, the june bugs banging their shells against the porch light, the sounds of cars in the distance.

"Stan, you're not going to get your hands on him again because he's GONE, one way or the other he's gone, whether the cops get him or he stays away, stays wherever he took off to, he's gone because of you," I was so mad I was shaking, my hands clenched into tight fists. I'd like to kill someone, I could feel this murderous blood red feeling like I'd felt so many times before.

He turned to me, that look of drunken anger that I knew well. I knew this violent, angry life so well, like a terrible book read over and over. The scenes were all the same. I knew that look and felt the dull fear that I should feel when he looks at me like that, maybe the same dull fear that Johnny felt when he had to deal with his father.

So I started breathing faster and looked around for the best place to go, the best escape, but there was no escape. There never was. He stood up fast and swung and I wasn't quick enough and the closed fist connected with my face and the pain exploded, little black stars and pain and I fell to the floor.

Sometimes Stan will give up after just one hit, that's all he's interested in, like a cat swatting a mouse. But other times he'll stand stubbornly over you and pound and pound until the pain loses meaning and the cliché becomes achingly clear, a violent drunken marriage in the worst neighborhood in Tulsa.

Feeling fragile and bruised, the T.V. still blaring its idiot noise, I picked myself up. Stan had passed out on the couch, his chest still and he wasn't breathing in between huge drunken gulps of air. I hated him and I hated myself. I thought of Johnny out alone somewhere, scared of the world and the cops and what he did, whatever it was. I knew I didn't know, didn't know the real hows and whys of that killing.

I took half a cup of old coffee and heated it on the stove, poured it into my big mug and went out on the porch, the cool night air feeling good against all the places Stan had punched. I watched the june bugs ram themselves against the porch light, idiot bugs battering the white glass. The warmth of the coffee through the mug felt good against my palms.

I hated myself because I had stayed in this place, kept Johnny here. If anyone was to blame for his plight, for his murderous decision, it was me.


End file.
